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Congressional Record—House H5131 June 23, 2017 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H5131 say: $20 trillion in debt, a weakened Laden swore his allegiance to the Now, where are we today? military, roads and bridges that are Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar, even Iran, the number one state sponsor of falling down and an infrastructure that before the 9/11 attack on the United terrorism in the world, got some of its needs improvement, modernization in States. nuclear ability from Pakistan. North our skies for the Federal Aviation Ad- When bin Laden was killed in Paki- Korea, on the other side of the globe, ministration. stan, Ayman al-Zawahiri renewed that guess what, they are developing nu- There are so many areas that the oath and cemented ties between al- clear capability, and we can trace some government truly does have a function Qaida and the Taliban. Wherever the of their roots for their science back to and role. We will never get to it with Taliban is, you will see that al-Qaida is Pakistan. asparagus urine studies and dressing up not far behind. Since 1980, Pakistan has provided a as fruits and vegetables. Since 2010, the United States incor- safe haven and support, as I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, my hope is that all of rectly claimed that al-Qaida had just a for the Haqqani Network. The Haqqani us as Americans can find those overlap- little, small presence in the country, Network operates many places in the ping circles and fight this absolute ab- limited to only 50 or 100 fighters. Well, world, including Lebanon, a threat to surdity of waste in government, be re- we know now that is absolutely incor- Israel. sponsible with American tax dollars, rect. Since the 1980s, Pakistan has hosted and sustain our great Republic for the Then, in 2015, the shocking U.S. raid multiple madrassas that indoctrinate future of our children. in Afghanistan uncovered a massive al- thousands of Pakistani young who join Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance Qaida training camp for terrorists, radical groups. That is a nice way of of my time. rounding up over 150 al-Qaida terrorist saying terrorist groups. f activity individuals. This was more One Pakistan madrassa, which re- fighters in one raid than the U.S. ceives millions of dollars in state fund- PAKISTAN IS PLAYING THE claimed existed in the entire country. ing, has so many prominent terrorists UNITED STATES By the end of last year, U.S. officials in its alumni that it has the name of The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. announced that 250 al-Qaida terrorists the University of Jihad. FASO). Under the Speaker’s announced were killed or captured in 2016. I will continue. Since 1990, Pakistan policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair rec- The point here is that United States has supported terrorist groups in Kash- ognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. intelligence has been wrong about the mir, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, called POE) for 30 minutes. activity of terrorists in Pakistan and the LeT, and other terrorist groups in Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, when in Afghanistan, but we are getting it its proxy war with India. These groups our forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, right now. have carried out attacks inside India, the goal was simple: remove the ter- Along with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, such as the 2001 attack against the In- rorist group, the Taliban government we have another terrorist group—I dian Parliament. that sheltered the plotters of the 9/11 should have brought a chart to list all Since the 1990s, Pakistan has allowed attacks on America, and destroy al- of these—the Haqqani Network. those terrorist groups like the LeT to Qaida, a terrorist group. This was a Who are these folks? openly fundraise in the country of NATO operation. It is another terrorist group linked Pakistan. Beginning in the 1990s, Paki- A little history is in order. to al-Qaida and the Taliban. The stan provided training, advisers, intel- The United States was attacked. The Haqqani Network is responsible for ligence, and material support for the member nations of NATO agreed that more American deaths in the region Afghan Taliban, a specific terrorist this was an attack on one nation, and than any of the other terrorist groups group that operates in Afghanistan NATO agreed to retaliate to the ter- that I have already mentioned. based in Pakistan. rorist attack under article 5 of the b 1200 Pakistan had forged the alliance be- NATO agreement. Article 5 has been The Haqqani Network attacks inside tween the al-Qaida and the Taliban be- talked about recently in the press. Afghanistan, and they have been di- fore 9/11, and Hamid Gul, the former So these 28 nations, NATO, went into rectly traced back to Pakistan. All head of Pakistan’s ISI, is called the fa- Afghanistan, a haven for terrorists who roads to terror lead to Pakistan. ther of the Taliban. sought to attack and kill Americans. In fact, in 2011, Admiral Mike Mullen, Pakistani nuclear scientists met That was 16 years ago. This is the long- Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of with senior al-Qaida—this is a terrorist est war in American history, and yet it Staff, testified to the Senate, ‘‘the group—leadership in 1998, to discuss is still going on. Haqqani Network acts as a veritable the terrorist group’s desire to acquire Let’s examine how all of this is tak- arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intel- nuclear technology. ing place and center on one nation, ligence agency.’’ What is that? That is In 1998, several Pakistani officers Pakistan, and their role in all of this. the military arm of the Pakistan Gov- were killed in an al-Qaida training The Taliban, since that attack, has ernment working with terrorist groups camp by the United States. Well, what waged an insurgency in Afghanistan, a throughout the world. were they doing there? They were neighbor to Pakistan, and destabilized The truth is, Pakistan has ties to training the al-Qaida in terrorist ac- the country, creating a perfect condi- about every terrorist group in Afghani- tivities. This was a retaliation by the tion for terrorists to exploit in Afghan- stan, and we know that the Taliban U.S. for the Africa Embassy bombings. istan and spread that terrorist activity terrorist group is based out of Paki- In 2001, Pakistan ISI helped revive to other parts of the world. stan. the Afghan Taliban after it was de- The Taliban and al-Qaida have It came as no surprise that when the feated by the United States in the launched many of their attacks in Af- U.S. drone strike killed the leader of Northern Alliance. While Pakistan is ghanistan from their neighbor, Paki- the Taliban in 2016, guess where he fighting the Pakistani Taliban, it al- stan. Recently, a Taliban sneak attack was? He was in Pakistan hiding out. lows the Afghan Taliban, or what it re- killed more than 160 Afghan soldiers, There is a laundry list of evidence of fers to as the good Taliban, to operate prompting the defense minister and the Pakistan’s support for terrorist groups, freely in its territory. army chief of staff to resign. and I think a little more history is in Let me try to explain this. There is The Taliban, a terrorist group, order because this activity by Pakistan the Pakistani Taliban. It operates in doesn’t just stage attacks. They seize has been going on for years and has Pakistan. The Pakistan Government territory. The Special Inspector Gen- been below the radar. So let’s just list goes after those people because they eral for Afghan Reconstruction said, in some of the counts of the indictment are causing crimes in Pakistan. But January, that 172 Afghan districts are against Pakistan and their terrorist there is the Afghan Taliban that oper- controlled, influenced, and contested activity. ates out of Pakistan that is supported by the Taliban. Let’s go back to 1980. Pakistan ac- by ISI and works in Afghanistan to kill Al-Qaida has a long history and loy- tively assisted countries like North NATO forces, including Americans. alty to the Taliban—two terrorist Korea, Iran, and Libya in their efforts Pakistan says: oh, we are after terror- groups working together. Osama bin to build a nuclear weapon. ists. We are going after them. They are VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:05 Jun 24, 2017 Jkt 069060 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 0636 Sfmt 0634 E:\CR\FM\K23JN7.044 H23JNPT1 lotter on DSKBCFDHB2PROD with HOUSE H5132 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE June 23, 2017 only going after those terrorists that We have evidence that Pakistan sup- Pakistan that is playing the United operate in their country against Paki- ports terrorism. What happened was, States. Recently, before the United Na- stanis, not terrorist groups that oper- Pakistan scrambled American-made tions Security Council, H.E. Mahmoud ate in other parts of the world against jets to go after the Americans who Saikal, Ambassador, Permanent Rep- Americans. took out the Taliban. Fortunately, the resentative from Afghanistan spoke to After the U.S. invasion of Afghani- Americans were able to get away and the U.N. He has an excellent speech. stan in 2001, Osama bin Laden and they were not attacked by the Paki- The speech is Afghanistan’s relation- many senior al-Qaida leaders fled to stan Government. ship with Pakistan. Pakistan. Many of them are still there. To show how supportive Pakistan is, I am not going to read his entire Pakistan facilitated arms purchases one of our helicopters, you may re- speech, but I do want to make a couple and foreign fighter flows for al-Qaida member, had stealth on one of its ro- of comments from his point of view as the war continued.
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